The National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services (N-SSATS) is designed to collect information from all facilities in the United States, both public and private, that provide substance abuse treatment. N-SSATS provides the mechanism for quantifying the dynamic character and composition of the United States substance abuse treatment delivery system. The objectives of N-SSATS are to collect multipurpose data that can be used to assist the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administ... (more info)

The National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services (N-SSATS) is designed to collect information from all facilities in the United States, both public and private, that provide substance abuse treatment. N-SSATS provides the mechanism for quantifying the dynamic character and composition of the United States substance abuse treatment delivery system. The objectives of N-SSATS are to collect multipurpose data that can be used to assist the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and state and local governments in assessing the nature and extent of services provided and in forecasting treatment resource requirements, update SAMHSA's Inventory of Substance Abuse Treatment Services (I-SATS), analyze general treatment services trends, and generate the National Directory of Drug and Alcohol Abuse Treatment Programs and its online equivalent, the Substance Abuse Treatment Facility Locator.

N-SSATS is a
point-prevalence survey. It provides information on the substance
abuse treatment system and its clients on the reference date. Client
counts do not represent annual totals. Rather, N-SSATS provides a
"snapshot" of substance abuse treatment facilities and clients on an
average day.

N-SSATS collects data about facilities, not
individual clients. Data on clients represent an aggregate of clients
in treatment for each reporting facility.

N-SSATS attempts to
obtain responses from all known treatment and prevention facilities,
but it is a voluntary survey. There is no adjustment for facility
nonresponse.

To protect the privacy of respondents, financial data
originally collected have been removed from the public use file.
These modifications should not affect most analytic uses of the public
use file.

Previously, data was provided by facilities with a
reference date of October 1. A decision was made in 2001 to change
the reference date to the last business day of the month in
March. This change was made to help increase the timeliness of
responses by facilities. The result of this change meant that no data
was collected for 2001.

Methodology

Sample:
The Inventory of Substance Abuse Treatment Services
(I-SATS) provides the sampling frame for N-SSATS. Two categories of
treatment facilities in I-SATS may be distinguished. The largest group
of facilities includes those that are licensed, certified, or
otherwise approved by the state substance abuse agency to provide
substance abuse treatment. The second group represents the SAMHSA
effort in recent years to make I-SATS as comprehensive as possible by
including treatment facilities that state substance abuse agencies,
for a variety of reasons, do not license or certify. Many of these
facilities are private for-profit, small group practices, or
hospital-based programs.

Time Method:
Longitudinal

Data Source:

mail, telephone, and Web-based surveys

Response Rates:
N-SSATS questionnaires were mailed to a total of
18,204 facilities believed to offer substance abuse treatment
services. Of these facilities, 15.1 percent were found to be
ineligible for the survey because they had closed, were not providing
substance abuse treatment on March 29, 2002, or treated incarcerated
clients only. Of the remaining 15,459 facilities, 96 percent (14,756)
completed the survey. However, 1,036 of these facilities were deemed
to be out-of-scope (654 facilities) or had client counts reported by
another facility but no facility information (382 facilities).
Therefore, the final sample size was 13,720 (89 percent). Fifty-seven
percent of respondents completed the mail survey, 23 percent completed
the survey via telephone, and 20 percent completed the survey using a
Web-based questionnaire.

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Performed consistency checks.

Standardized missing values.

Created online analysis version with question text.

Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release:2004-02-11

Version History:

2014-12-10 Updated codebook to correct the cover and the frequency section.

2014-07-17 Changed the Stata system data file from version 13 to version 12 for compatibility on a wider range of systems.

2014-04-25 This study update was done in order to remove the geographic variables of County and MSA.

2013-11-27 Variable level xml file updated.

2012-05-01 Updated the queston text to fix minor typographical errors previously present. Also, updated the variable order so that it coincides with the questionnaire order and is consistent with other years in the N-SSATS series.

2008-01-30 The metadata record was updated with new
information to clarify changes made to the study referenced in the
collect note. Also, a processor's note was added to the pdf codebook.

2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to
one or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as
well as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS
portable, and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised
2005-11-04 to reflect these additions.

2004-06-23 The FIPS code for Miami-Dade county was
updated. The variable JAIL was removed. The variables COUNTY, MSA,
REGION, and DIVISION were added, and the documentation has been
revised to reflect these changes. Corresponding Stata data definition
statements have also been added.